1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to hand gloves, and particularly to a hand glove for enhancing the grip of a user and more uniformly transmitting load and/or vibration or shock to a hand in certain types of gripping activities.
In many types of home, industrial and sporting activities, it is necessary to grasp a cylindrical bar or ring, such as in weight lifting, bicycle riding, water skiing, motorcycle riding, driving a car or operating hand tools such as hammers, cutting tools, etc. While the human hand is well suited and adaptable to grasping many different shapes, repetitive grasping, particularly of these shapes, can result in repetitive motion injuries or strain and cumulative trauma disorders, such as carpal tunnel syndrome.
This is because the palmar surface of the hand, which is the surface of the hand which contacts the shape being grasped, is defined by the bones and soft tissue on the palmar side of the hand. These bones consist of five metacarpals which extend from the wrist up to the base of the fingers. The metacarpals have varying degrees of movement, with the thumb and little finger metacarpals having the most movement, and the index finger metacarpal having the least. These five metacarpals are dished, creating a metacarpal arch or concavity in the central portion of the palm.
At the distal ends of the metacarpals, the fingers are attached. The index, middle, ring and little fingers each have three phalanges, with the phalanx attached to the corresponding metacarpal being the proximal phalanx, the next phalanx being the middle, and the outer phalanx (at the fingertips) being the distal phalanx. The thumb has only two phalanges, a proximal and a distal.
When laying the hand palm down on a flat surface, most of the load is borne by the fingers and around the perimeter of the palm. Very little load is borne in the central part of the palm due to the metacarpal arch. In addition, when grasping a cylindrical bar, much of the load is borne by the palmar surface along a line which extends across the bases of the proximal phalanges of the index, middle, ring and little fingers. Grasping such an object also loads the base of the proximal phalanx of the thumb. These loads at the base portions of the fingers are most concentrated at the immediate inside, or 0.degree. position (See FIG. 3 the little, ring, middle and index finger), of the fingers and is only spread to the sides of the base portions of the fingers by whatever stable soft tissue the user has in that area. Also, such loading can tend to rotate the fingers with undesirable effects.
The present invention seeks to enhance hand gripping, particularly of a straight (like a handle bar) or curved (like a steering wheel) cylindrical shape to help reduce hand strain and injuries and increase stamina.